Home › Forums › Let’s Talk Photography › At what point do you consider yourself/others as a professional photographer? › Reply To: At what point do you consider yourself/others as a professional photographer?
cameraclickerA photographer is one who writes with light. Take out your cell phone, set camera mode, press shutter button. Congratulations, you are a photographer.
A professional photographer is one who derives, or hopes to derive, a primary amount of income from photography. Having a business number/registered. Having a tax number. Having a quantity of spare equipment. Having sufficient insurance. Keeping track of income. All of these things point toward it being a business rather than a hobby.
I haven’t researched the origin of the word “Fauxtographer”, but here it seems to mean someone who has set up a portrait or wedding business without a clue about how to create a reasonable photo. The front page, here, has some excellent examples of bad photos. There are other examples in some of the threads, here, as well. By contrast, if you shoot a landscape, print it and try to sell the print, regardless of how good or bad the photo is, and whether you actually receive money for selling it, you are not a fauxtographer because you are selling a finished product, not performing a service, poorly.
Good photography or bad photography does not make you a professional. The business does. There are photographers that shoot for themselves with no intention of selling photos or services, that are none-the-less among the best photographers in the world. There are other photographers, as we have seen here, that while strictly speaking are professional, they also range from not very good to just plain terrible.